I recently changed job. As part of my preparation for the fresh challenges ahead, I took some time to reflect on what has worked – and not worked so well – for me throughout my career.
I am always keen to take what I have learned from my own experience. But there are also some time-served pieces of advice that just… work.
I have been lucky to have some excellent mentors over the years. Some are personal contacts, while others are people I might never meet, but whose published views have provoked my interest and inspired me.
Running and transforming a business is such a wide-ranging endeavour that it’s impossible to cover everything in just one post, but let me share a couple of my favourite tips with you.
Jack Welch – The importance of candour
Is there anyone in the corporate world who hasn’t heard of Jack Welch? My professional career began in the 1990s, when science and technology started to see massive growth. Jack Welch had already been at the helm of GE for a decade and was famed for his streamlining approach, which saw factories closed, payrolls reduced… and market value boom. He turned a $13 billion company into a $500 billion enterprise. That’s impressive by any measure.
What really chimes with me is something that he has often spoken about; about the importance of candour – or truthfulness, honesty – in the workplace.
He valued surprise and made unexpected visits to GE’s plants and offices (something the store employees at my previous company might recognise). While other CEOs were wondering why they smelled fresh paint everywhere they went, he made sure he was seeing things how they really were.
My additional take on this is that I always want to hear from employees if anything isn’t working, and it is why I will always prioritise the people in my team who deal with customers. The only way you can fix things and make them better for your customers is to find out about the systems, processes or ways of working that don’t deliver a great service to them. That’s what I’m interested in hearing about.
Ram Charan – The discipline of getting things done
And so from the inside view to a more academic approach. Ram Charan has acted as an advisor to top businesses all around the world, and is a prolific author, speaker, coach and mentor. He is known for cutting through complexity to get to the core of problems. Verizon’s former CEO Ivan Seidenberg called him his “secret weapon”.
I have read quite a few of his books, and I really identify with the most recent, The Attacker’s Advantage, which talks about uncertainty (now widely accepted as the only certainty in today’s environment), how to spot the associated opportunities and take advantage of them. This is exactly how I like to operate. It’s why I drove so hard to lay the foundations for, and then launch the UK’s first and leading 4G network.
I am also a great fan of his book Execution, co-authored with Larry Bossidy – who incidentally also had a long stint at GE – which is all about the discipline of getting things done.
The learning from this book that I have taken on is to always stay closely involved with the running of a business. Sometimes maybe too closely for people’s liking! But for me it’s absolutely fundamental to know what is going on right across the scope of operations, at all levels, to be involved, interested and engaged – and to use those insights to drive your company’s ambition, plans and priorities.
What about today’s businesses?
The commercial landscape has of course moved on at a phenomenal rate since I started out, and technology continues to change just about everything. The majority of my working life has been spent in industries – IT and mobile technology – that look ahead and create that change. Yet the advice from both Jack and Ram has stuck with me.
It doesn’t matter that they started talking about business before the Internet took off, before the dotcom boom, before the introduction of smartphones, high-end computer processors and superfast mobile networks. Their philosophies stand the test of time and that is why I stand by them.
However, it is also important to pay attention to the learning we have gained since the world started to go digital. Here is a final piece of advice from someone who I had the opportunity to work with for a couple of years through her charity Go ON UK (this has now joined forces with doteveryone to champion digital inclusion). She also co-founded one of the very first dotcom successes, lastminute.com.
Martha Lane Fox – Getting on with it
This is great advice – documented a couple of months ago as part of a BBC Business series called CEO Secrets – and it aligns very well with what you will read in “The Attacker’s Advantage”. Quite simply, because the world around us is changing ever more quickly, it’s vital, whether you are setting up a new business or transforming an existing one, to set the wheels in motion with speed. And then keep up the pace.
Otherwise you risk losing any head start or being overtaken by the competition. Especially for today’s tech entrepreneurs, it is easier than ever to get started with very little money, thanks to the array of open-source software available. So if you are in any doubt, take Martha’s advice and get on with it!
I hope that you have enjoyed this post and that you’ll forgive me for ending it with a plug. Having benefited so much from other people’s experiences throughout my career, a couple of years ago I started to think about what I could contribute personally. And then I wrote it down.
That is where my book “The 4G Mobile Revolution: Creation, Innovation and Transformation at EE” came from. If you are interested in finding out more, it will be published by Kogan Page this August. That’s all I will say for now. Plug over!
What’s the best piece of business advice that you have come across? Please comment below to share your views.
KINGSMITH.
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